conference proceedings - Australian Army

296
THE AUSTRALIAN ARMY AND THE VIETNAM WAR 1962–1972
This officer’s career was to come full-circle. Captain Mike Smith’s career peaked with
the rank of Major General and the deputy command of the multinational United Nations
peacekeeping force in East Timor. Prior to taking up that appointment, as Director
General East Timor in Defence Headquarters and as head of the International Force East
Timor (INTERFET) liaison staff in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations at United
Nations Headquarters in 1999, his efforts were instrumental in making INTERFET a
success. He was also the first officer who had not served in Vietnam to command an
Australian infantry battalion. After a career spent in an Army tasked with the territorial
defence of Australia, Smith and his succeeding generation of officers were, once again,
being asked to make an active contribution to regional security and stability.
The Tactical Consequences of the War in Vietnam
As in any combined operation, the key challenge encountered by Australian forces was
the need to establish effective levels of interoperability with the American forces to which
the Australian contingent was attached. This problem became particularly critical for
the battalion sent to Vietnam in June 1965. This battalion was based with the US 173rd
Airborne Brigade (Separate) in Bien Hoa and operated through the III Corps area. Not
only was Australian equipment found to be of a poorer quality than that used by the US
Army forces that they worked with, but there was ongoing disagreement over doctrine
and tactics. As a result, the Australian Government dispatched a largely self-sufficient
brigade-sized Task Force which conducted independent operations in its own area of
operations in Phuoc Tuy Province from 1966 to 1971. The fact that the Task Force had
its own logistics link through the coastal town of Vung Tau, enabled it to exercise a
greater degree of self-reliance.
Although Australian forces came under the operational control of a US headquarters,
II Field Force Vietnam, the Australians were largely responsible for fighting the war in
their own way. 54 Reflecting the different scale of the Australian forces involved, as well
as the more limited resources available to them, Australian Army tactics for tropical
counter-insurgency warfare remained quite distinct from those employed by the American
forces. Building on their previous experience in Malaya and during Confrontation with
Indonesia, the Army units employed patrolling and cordon and search operations to
maintain constant pressure on the Viet Cong infrastructure. While a few major battles
occurred, Australian operations, for the most part, were characterised by a ‘softly-softly’
approach. Small unit operations, rather than inflicting massive battlefield casualties, lay
at the heart of Australian operational doctrine. One commentator has noted:
54. Grey, The Australian Army, 220.